Yes on tour in support of Close to the Edge
Timeline: From Progeny shows into Topographic Oceans: Yes peaks on artistic freedom
October 31, 1972: Yes at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
November 1, 1972, National Arts Centre English Theatre, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
November 11, 1972, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
November 12, 1972, Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina
November 14, 1972, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia
November 15, 1972, Knoxville Civic Auditorium, Knoxville, Tennessee
November 20, 1972, Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, New York
December 15, 1972, Yes films the Yessongs concert film, Rainbow Theatre, London, England
March 2, 1973, Jamie Muir (percussionist for King Crimson) gives a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda to Jon Anderson at Bill Bruford’s wedding reception (source, wiki page on Tales from Topographic Oceans).
March 8, 9, 10. Yes is on tour in Tokyo, Japan and Jon is reading Autobiography of a Yogi. He finds a footnote that describes the four classification of Vedic scriptures and decides it would make a nice platform for a concept album based on four interelated pieces of music. (source: liner notes for Tales from Topographic Oceans)
March 19 -March 27. Australia tour. Jon introduces Topographic Oceans concept to Steve Howe and they begin working on musical ideas. (source: album liner notes)
April 4 to April 19. Continued work on Topographic Oceans during US tour. (source: album liner notes)
April 20, 1973, Savannah, Georgia concert. Jon and Steve hold a 6 hour session in their hotel room from 1 AM until 7 AM (technically, probably April 21, since it was after midnight). Jon states, “...we worked out the vocal. lyrical, and instrumental foundation for the four movements. It was a magical experience which left both of us exhilerated for days.” (source: album liner notes)
Yes’ Close to the Edge tour ends April 22, 1973, in West Palm Beach, Florida, USA.
May and June, 1973: Yes rehearses Tales from Topographic Oceans. (source: deduced from the end date of the Close to the Edge tour (April 22, 1973), Jon’s interview with dj Ed Sciaky, and the interview with Steve Howe by Andrew Tyler in Disc magazine, June 2, 1973)
June (or May) 1973: Finalizing lyrics. Jon Anderson (and Alan White and Eddie Offord) went to Marrakech, Morocco (in northern Africa), spent some time in the foothills of the Atlas mountains, then came back to the Holiday Inn hotel and finalized the lyrics for Topographic Oceans over three days. Steve Howe had already contributed lyrical ideas. I’m unsure of the date of the vacation, but probably after rehearsing Topographic Oceans for two months in May and June, so probably at end of June, just prior to recording. Or, it could be at the beginning of May, prior to two months of rehearsals. (Source: interview with dj Ed Sciaky; unsure of date of interview, possibly February 16, 1974, day of Philadephia show, since Sciaky was a dj in Philly). Primary inspiration for lyrics and liner notes: The Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda), The Finding of the Third Eye (Vera Stanley-Alder), Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach), The Psychedelic Experience (Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner), and possibly just ideas Jon and Steve had gleaned from a variety of places.
Recording sessions: Approximately July 1 until September 15, two and half months total. (The album says Summer 1973 and early Autumn 1973). Morgan Studios, 169-171 High Road, Willesden, North West London. (source, wiki).
Release date: December 7, 1973 (UK), January 9, 1974 (US)
“The Divine Poet, holding the sweet melodious flute, reposing on the raging waves of the sea, swiftly glides over the endless canopy of the sky.
This divine melody with uniform light spreads over the whole world. It disseminates the wisdom that inspires the brave. And with this melody the pious devotees expand their field of knowledge.” (Sama Veda, 619, Rig Veda 5.48.2)
COMMENTARY: The difference and similarity between the Tales from Topographic Oceans and the Progeny periods.
As I continued to do ridiculously detailed running commentaries on the Progeny boxed set, I knew eventually I would have to face the comparison between Topographic Oceans and what is considered their classic period, The Yes Album through Close to the Edge, which is exclusively what makes up the Progeny/Yessongs albums. And yet when I came to that moment of writing this essay, I choked. I just quit writing and began day by day procrastination that lasted so long I quit counting the weeks. There was a time in my life when I addressed this issue like this: “What’s the big deal? All the elements of Tales from Topographic Oceans can be found in Close to the Edge and Fragile. The only thing that Yes did was stretch these elements out a bit and explore them a little further. People whining about this are a bunch of babies.”
However, having immersed myself in the Progeny boxed set, I’ve changed my mind. As I said at the beginning of my Progeny commentaries, I was never a fan of the Yessongs album, and I never saw their early concerts based on those three albums that brought their rise to fame (though I had the albums and liked them). My first show was 1975, so I was very much a “mid period” Yes fan. To me their height was Topographic Oceans, Relayer, and the solo album period-- 1974 to 1976, and the albums after this were a coming down to commerical and mainstream reality, the epitome being the 90125 album and Asia’s debut. When Wakeman rejoined for 1977’s Going for the One, I was like, “shit, they won’t play Tales and Relayer anymore,” and that’s pretty much what happened for a couple of decades (except for “Soon” making it into a medley in 1979). I felt that the band was retreating to the safer territory of their Yessongs period, combined with whatever was their new album. Mind you, I like all phases of the band’s career, even their albums of mostly shorter songs. I’m just reflecting on how I felt as a teenage fan.
Now that I’ve spent so much time immersed in Progeny, I can totally see why Topographic Oceans was rejected by a certain segment on their fanbase while simultaneously being embraced by the more experimental contingent whose musical tastes were probably wider. I would now say that many, but not ALL, of the elements of Topographic Oceans can be found in the Yessongs repetoire, especially Close to the Edge. But I can also see what a blistering ROCK act Yes was on the Progeny tour, and how because of Jon and Steve’s love of metaphysics and classical music, they took a pretty big gamble on Topographic with something that feels almost completely “other” than rock music. The components of early 70s rock was the guitar riff and the extended solo, just post-Woodstock, post-blues rock, and post-Hendrix as it were. To be “cool” meant to “rock out” and blow the audience away with extended improvisations. Yes and early progressive rock bands certainly added to that formula (touches of country, folk, electronic music, jazz, and classical-like structures), but they were still rooted in those staples-- just listen to the opening of “Yours is No Disgrace,” the riff throughout “Siberian Khatru,” and the riffs that were stitched together to make up “Heart of the Sunrise.” If you go to the Youtube review, Yes Tales From Topographic Oceans Review In the Court of the Wenton King part 14, one of the reviewers says that the album “doesn’t rock... that’s the problem.” After being immersed in Progeny for weeks, I can now understand how people felt this way. Having immersed myself in that period of the band when almost everything was blistering, to be thrown into Topographic Oceans must have seemed like another world. However, what would have been a problem for some fans would have been exactly why I liked it. I always liked things that didn’t rock and by this time had already been exposed to a bit of avant garde music, a little free jazz, and some folkish singer-songwriters. Not surprisingly, this same Youtube reviewer especially doesn’t like “The Remembering” because it’s laid back and pretty (he says “twee”) instead of rocking. He says bluntly, “I hate it.” For me, a quiet portion of an extended prog piece where the rhythm section lays back or disappears, is usually my favorite moment. Think of Annie Haslam during the quiet interlude of “Things I Don’t Understand” when she’s singing the highest notes in rock music history; that’s what I’m talking about! Or think of “The Remembering”-- from the strange echoey guitar and pipe organ that starts it off, to the spacey synthesizer that closes it, that’s pretty much what would have sold me on it. I was not waiting for my fix of guitar riffs (even though the “relayer...” section gives you a small taste), but was being excited for whatever unconventional music they could offer.
For a full analysis of the rock heresies in Topographic Oceans, let’s just start with the opening and closing chants of “The Revealing Science of God.” Granted, the genesis of a section like this can clearly be found in “I Get Up I Get Down” or maybe even the vocal interlude of “Heart of the Sunrise,” but those songs began and ended with requisite rocking. It’s quite different to start with what Jon himself called a “sort of Gregorian chant.” Chants have simpler melodies, almost monotone at times, which convey a sense of solemnity. (Googled “solemnity” to make sure the definition fits. Check. “so·lem·ni·tysəˈlemnədē/noun the state or quality of being serious and dignified." a formal, dignified rite or ceremony. plural noun: solemnities "the ritual of the church was observed in all its solemnities".) Well, to start an album like this, especially a rock album, is a lot different than starting with a guitar riff or a screaming solo. Instead of blowing people away with your power, you are basically challenging them with a gentle intro that calls them to a prayerful state of mind with very obscure lyrics! And if you listen to the bootleg tapes from the Topographic Oceans tour, Yes takes this approach a step further by starting the performance of Topographic Ocean by playing a tape of Vangelis’ ambient “Creation du Monde” while Jon talked over it, explaining the inspiration for the work in equally serious tones. Believe it or not, there was a minority of the audience that was ready for this, but not your average “Roundabout” fan. At that point, you might as well name it “The Revealing Science of God.” That title also fits with the narrative of yoga traditions at the time. Two of the prominent gurus of that time, Paramahansa Yogananda (despite that he died in 1952, his influence was huge) and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Science of Being and Art of Living, 1963), both used the term “science” to describe their techniques. A book by Yogananda’s guru was called The Holy Science. Even the devotionally-focused guru Swami Prabhupada had a book called The Science of Self Realization. While the Western traditions had firmly separated their “science” from their “faith-based religion,” the Eastern traditions saw their spiritual practices as a scientific process that produced a specific result-- self realization, enlightenment, or union with God.
So right off the bat, you have this wholly “other” feeling about Topographic Oceans. The opening track also spends a lot of time languishing in beautiful melodies, calming mid tempos, relishing us in quiet, melodic moments like Steve’s first mellow guitar solo. My own speculation was that Yes, having spent two or three solid years putting on riotous rock concerts at the height of hard rock/play-fast-guitar-solo mania, were just craving an escape route. They couldn’t very well go the route of John Denver and Bread, but they could produce more mid-tempo material, more mellow mood music, and place it within the context of their own version of what was then called “classical rock.” Jon famously said he thought that phrase sounded like “strawberry bricks,” but ELP and Renaissance’s use of classical passages were largely responsible for the name, and it stuck until “progressive rock” came into fashion (according to wikipedia, the term was used in the liner notes to Caravan’s 1968 debut album, when it specifically came to be applied to classical and rock hybrids) .
With “The Remembering,” the problems (if you see it that way, from a “rocker” standpoint) are only compounded. Personally, I adore mellow folk music as well as spacey electronics. So to me, “The Remembering,” which weds these elements to Yes’ prog style, is one of their great epics. But let’s face it, if guitar riffs and shouted vocals are what you are looking for in rock music, this piece is just going to make you yawn. After that opening entrancing menagarie of vibrating electric guitar and pipe organ, “The Remembering” settles into a mellowness that doesn’t let up for over NINE MINUTES. Alan doesn’t appear to hit a drum until 5:40 into the song, and even then it sounds like a soft mallet on tom toms and a bit of cymbal. And there are TWO spacey mellotron/synth interludes during this time. At 9:10 the rhythm begins to pick up, but it’s STILL in an acoustic mode with Steve doing some great background playing for Jon’s playful melody, “Don the cap and close your eyes imagine all the glorious challenge/ Iron metal cast to others...” At 10:38 in, the “Relayer...” section starts and things get rocking, only to have a third mellow synth/mellotron segment bring it back to its contemplative focus. Things pick up again afterward, and there’s even a bit of guitar riffing and some smoking bass, but again the mood shifts back to the spacey mellotron/synth passage, the longest such segment yet. The beauty of “The Remembering” is that it trips up rock cliches at every turn. To our rock reviewer friends at Youtube, this was not the best of news. It ends with one of Yes’ grandest high drama passages-- mellotron choir blazing, Howe providing trademark climactic leads, Anderson delivering his merger of mysticism and nature with intensity, and Wakeman winding it all down with a beautiful bit of spaciness. What more could we ask for in a song attempting to depict the vastness of human experience over countless lifetimes of birth, death, and rebirth? But the truth is, a lot of people going to a rock show just want to rock out, even if it’s progrocking out. This song is just going to go over their heads, and possibly put them to sleep. Indeed, when forced with touring the entire work, the band eventually dropped “The Remembering” from the setlist after roughly two months of touring (on March 1, 1974 to be exact), and it almost never reappeared in a setlist again (they did rehearse it and play it twice on the 1976 tour).
Well, if that wasn’t “other” enough, guess what comes next-- “The Ancient”-- which starts with almost twelve and a half minutes of the strangest and most glorious arranging ever to grace a progressive rock album. Our Youtube reviewers, who hated “The Remembering” because it was too mellow and pretty, didn’t like this song because it was too weird and dissonant. I have come to see this as the conventional middle-of-the-road notion of what is acceptable in progrock. “The Ancient” is sun worship colliding with cutting edge recording technology and a fearless group of arrangers. 1973 was the peak year for experiments in progressive rock arranging-- King Crimson clocked in with a thirteen minute plus instrumental masterpiece called “Lark’s Tongues in Aspic, part one” featuring the percussion team of Jamie Muir and ex-Yesman Bill Bruford, and ELP tackled an aggressive classical composition, Ginastera’s “Toccata,” featuring a synthesized drum solo. Genesis did “Dancing Out with the Moonlit Knight,” and in 1974, their 5 minute experimental improvisation, “The Waiting Room.” But Yes’ piece stood as one of the most challenging of the year, perhaps the entire decade, if only because it served as the most challenging moment of an already complex, interrelated, symphonic rock album (maybe only outdone by Mike Oldfield’s 1978 double album Incantations because he used a small classical ensemble to make it lean even further from the rock fold.) Everything conspired to “The Ancient’s” otherness-- the dissonant guitar work, the strange mellotron chords, the elaborate percussion effects, and the chanting of the names of the sun darting in an out of the arrangement. Only the harmonic acoustic classical guitar spotlight and very brief song at the end brought some semblence of normalcy to the proceedings. But when I want a roller coaster ride, “The Ancient” that is my go-to piece; it’s my favorite arrangement of the classic prog era.
The work closes with Ritual. This piece really ties the composition together, although most rock fans would be too overwhelmed by this point to realize it. “The Revealing Science of God’s” opening guitar salvo reappears three times in this composition, including a searing delivery right at the end. It also appears in another section of the song dedicated to Steve restating many of the album’s themes, as well as during the drum/synth segment. The centerpiece is a percussion and synthesizer movement that became a grand finale for the band’s concerts for the next three years. While there is quite a bit of rocking on this song, most average rock fans would have lost interest a long time ago, maybe even a certain percentage of progrock fans. Up until Topographic Oceans, Yes were able to hold on to this contigent while giving them shorter glimpses of originality. But with this album, they challenged every limitation of what was acceptable in the context of rock music. This was the strength of the work and what made it a legend in prog circles, while also being the dividing line for fan acceptance.
For me, Topographic Oceans has always been my favorite Yes album, and certainly one of my all-time-favorites amongst my five decades of listening. But when I listen to the blistering rock shows on Progeny, I can’t help but think they bewildered a certain portion of their audience with the album. Some people call a work like this “self-indulgent,” but I’m of the opinion that you want artists to be indulgent, otherwise you’ll miss out on all the possibilities of art if they only adhere to the formula that made them successful. If you only compose to audience expectations, there is no possibility for artistic growth and challenge. To read more on this topic, google “Sunday Edition: Being Self-indulgent and Pretentious.” Or check out this quote from Egg/National Health member Mont Campbell: "I do think that self-indulgence is a good thing in art because if you are trying to please other people all the time you just stick to the same model all the time, and nobody hears anything new so nobody expects anything new." This is what made progressive rock one of the most interesting genres of popular music-- the desire to go where no rock musicians had dared to go before.
My only suggestion for Yes would have been to wait a bit before performing it in toto in concert, and maybe to book some smaller venues so the acoustics would be better for a work this intricate. In Britain it was performed before it even came out, and in America just weeks after being released. You could hear from audience tapes at some of the later shows that fans had a better chance to get to know it and applauded more enthusiastically. But even for those us who did like the work, it would take quite a few weeks, maybe even months, to digest something this complex. Sadly, now that there is a cult of fans for the album around the world, there is no film or professional recording of the tour (although the early Rainbow Theatre concerts are alleged to have been recorded but later went “missing”), and not even a tribute band has been willing to tackle the composition (as of 2017). Yes themselves finally restaged 2 1/3 sides of Topographic Oceans in 2016 and 2017, and it was performed even better than I could have imagined with four newer musicians in the band (Sherwood, Davison, Schellen, and Downes), and was a highlight of my concert experiences with the band. Read my epic review of the concerts HERE & NOW.
Another complaint leveled against the work was that of not highlighting Rick Wakeman’s keyboards. While I don’t think this decreased the quality of Topographic Oceans, I can see how this would affect some fans, and certainly produce ego conflicts within the band. On this album, Howe was simply on a roll as a composer. The next year, the same dilemma would dog Genesis when keyboardist Tony Kaye would peak all over The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, leaving guitarist Steve Hackett scrambling to find some room. I actually lean toward the keyboardist’s role in progressive rock, and while I was enthralled with Bank’s work on The Lamb, I equally considered Topographic Oceans Howe’s greatest moment with the Yes. Both albums had shattering effects on the bands. Peter Gabriel left after The Lamb in part because he felt he’d never again have the kind of control he had over that work. Wakeman left Yes after Topographic Oceans in part because of conflicts over the album as well as the success of his first two solo albums.
Both bands also suffered a bit of an identity crises after their respective album. Genesis’ album hadn’t sold well in the US and the band (except Peter Gabriel) came to see it as a failure. And while Yes’ epic sold well out of the box, enough to get it into the Top Ten, the sales leveled off quickly and it received some bad reviews. The band even felt compelled to drop “The Remembering” from the setlist, and an interview by Ed Sciaky with Jon Anderson during the tour found some second guessing about the album, where he actually said they discussed re-recording it! Many of these fears should have been put to rest by the results of year-end polls in both Britain and the US. Melody Maker’s yearly readers poll voted Anderson and Howe as the best composers of the year, and Tales made the #3 and #4 positions in the album categories for the International and British sections. In America, Playboy magazine’s annual poll ranked it at #9 in a magazine whose readership was steeped in jazz and the more complicated wings of rock. This does not constitute a failure in the eyes of fans.
After the tour, the band didn’t play complete versions of the first three sides of the album for the next 22 years with the exception of a failed attempt to revive “The Remembering” in 1976. However, this absence and controversy in Yes’ history may have given Topographic Oceans the James Dean effect-- the legendary status of an artist/artwork ripped from their fans too soon. I can honestly tell you that for fans who were my age, and for whom the epic period of Yes was the height of their art, collecting and obsessing on Topographic Oceans artifacts over the decades (audience concert tapes, photos, tour programs, and interviews) was something akin to a crazed cult of intellectuals trying to decode the hieroglyphics of Egypt. Forty two years later, the album still has a mystique that is rarely rivaled in rock music’s history (probably only topped by the mystery surrounding The Beach Boys derailed SMiLE album). Yes took all the spiritual and artistic idealism of the counterculture from the 60s and 70s and rolled it into one grand work. For me, it remains a peak artistic expression of that era.
The counterculture was drenched in controvery. It took what had been considered tradition since WWll and blew it out the window. Two of the most sacred cows of culture, religion and politics, were given a drubbing by dissidents all over the Western world. The government responded to political dissidents like the Black Panthers with outright assasination, while fringe religious adherents were kidnapped and put through psychological brainwashing called “deprogramming.” Yes’ epic period was an artistic representation of that challenging period-- it was multi-stylistic, complex, multi-cultural, and therefore almost a heresy to mainstream culture, and to mainstream rock music that had begun as a three chord genre dealing with standard teen emotional themes.
The Beat writers in the 1950s and The Beatles in the 1960s had laid the groundwork for dabbling in other philosophies and cultures and merging it with a more experimental form of pop. Yes took that trend and ran with it probably farther than any other band in the 1970s, and toured the world with that kind of message in their music and tour programs. As a result, it became a kind of pinnacle of artistic freedom, the moment from which there was nowhere further to go. Topographic Oceans had become for progressive rock what Sgt. Pepper had become for psychedelia-- a moment of experimentation from which the only possible response was retreat. But there were differences because The Beatles had received almost universal acclaim and their album was number one in the charts for an entire summer. Yes’ Topographic Ocean was much more complex, and thus had to contend with a lesser sales status and some confused or hostile critics. Many of their fans, however, got it completely, and it became the counterculture equivalent of a spiritually-theme rock symphony.
In the end, a lot of music appreciation just comes down to personal taste. If you like a more rocking approach, I can see how you would prefer Relayer, Progeny, or Close to the Edge. I prefer a more melodic approach, and alternatively, an avant garde approach. So, there you have it with "The Remembering" and "The Ancient" back to back. The band NEVER veered from rock that much ever again, and they never again performed these four songs again as a single work of art. Fortunately, the 2016 and 2017 performances of over half of Topographic Oceans reminded us of how great these tracks could be live in concert, but the dream of seeing all four sides in concert is still seemingly out of reach. (Again, my review of the Chicago and Milwaukee shows are HERE & NOW.) One day, even if it’s just a dedicated troupe of tribute artists, it’s going to happen. It’s too good of a piece of art to be lost to history.
Perhaps this fan-generated video about the work conveys the mystery of the album better than any words I can muster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av6v-JtIDFo
P.S. Found another interesting review of Topographic Ocean on youtube.
Click here to listen!
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